thanks beth. the reason i decided to go with copper was because i got scared off of hyposalinity. i heard from a few people that they lost a lot of fish. also, i heard it was really really hard to get the salinity to stay at the right level. too high, ich survives, too low, fish die. i guess i thought the copper would give my fish a better chance of survival. im getting really dissapointed and frusterated with this tank. ive had some really bad luck and i feel bad for my fish. im trying my hardest to do everything right....all my levels are good, i feed them a good variety. i dunno its just frusterating to get ich. i never had any problems with my first tank and now this one has been a lot more challenging. thanks for the help though, i did follow the directions on the bottle, so hopefully it will start to work well and i can get through this bump in the road.